Chofim

Yesterday I linked to Hannah Szenes' poem about walkng on the beach, so that led rather obviously to the shir titled Beaches (Chofim). I fear many of the shirim we'll be encountering will be a bit heavy on history, since much of the canon is; all the more reason to demonstrate that some of it is simply poetry+moving music=popular songs.

Chofim is sort of a love song, but mostly it's about the pain of love lost. It was written by Natan Yonatan (1923-2004), one of the most prolific authors of shirim - hundreds of his poems were put to music; this is one of the more famous of them. The music is by Nachum Heiman (born 1934), also one of the most popular creators of shirim.

Nycerbarb was so helpful as to point us at this website which offers translations of shirim, so here are the words of Chofim:


חופים הם לפעמים געגועים לנחל.
ראיתי פעם חוף
שנחל עזבו
עם לב שבור של חול ואבן.
והאדם, והאדם הוא לפעמים גם כן יכול
להישאר נטוש ובלי כוחות
ממש כמו חוף.

גם הצדפים
כמו חופים, כמו הרוח
גם הצדפים הם לפעמים געגועים
לבית שתמיד אהבנו
אשר היה ורק הים
שר לבדו שם את שיריו.

כך בין צדפי ליבו של האדם שרים לו נעוריו.

Shores are sometimes yearning to the river.
I once saw a shore
That the river had abandoned
With a broken heart of sand and stone
And man, and man
Can sometimes also end up
Abandoned and without strength, just like a shore.

Also shells,
Just like shores and the wind
Also shells are sometimes yearning
The home we have always loved
When it was and only the sea
Sings there by itself its songs
Thus, between the shellsof man's heart
his youth sings to him.

The earliest version of the shir (I think) was done by Chava Alberstein (born 1947), in about 1970


Alberstein is one of the most important Israeli singers, and she's been creative since the mid 1960s. I expect we'll meet her again in this series.

Then we've got this version, by Lahakat HaNachal, from 1970 or '71. Lahakat HaNachal means the military band of the Nachal brigade, and this particular group was one of the most important, and produced many long-standing creators. This particular clip, filmed on the shore of the Dead Sea, focuses on Yardena Arazi (Born 1951), who is still creative tho not of Alberstein's stature. The idiotic looking chap behind her is Efraim Shamir, who was later a member of the fantastic Kaveret group, about whom I'll have to write some other time. By then he didn't look quite so silly anymore.